round of the stars rolls to my cracked old tune,
Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over
the moon._

III

Then he cradled his doll on his crooning heart and cried as a sea-bird
cries;
And the hot sun reeled like a drunken god through the violent violet
vault:
And the hillside cottage that danced to the deep debauch of the
perfumed skies
Grew palsied and white in the purple heath as a pillar of Dead
Sea salt.

IV

There were three gaunt sun-flowers nigh his chair: they were yellow as
death and tall;
And they threw their sharp blue shadowy stars on the blind white
wizard wall;
And they nodded their heads to the weird old hymn that daunted the light
of the noon,
_Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over
the moon._

V

The little dog laughed and leered with the white of his eye as he
sidled away
To stare at the dwarfish hunchback waves that crawled to the foot of
the hill,
For his master's infinite mind was wide to the wealth of the night
and the day;
The walls were down: it was one with the Deep that only a God
can fill.

VI

Then a tiny maiden of ten sweet summers arrived with a song and
a smile,
And she swung on the elfin garden-gate and sung to the sea for
a while,
And a phantom face went weeping by and a ghost began to croon
_Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over
the moon._

VII

And she followed a butterfly up to his chair; and the moon-calf caught
at her hand
And stared at her wide blue startled eyes and muttered, "My dear,
I have been,
In fact, I am there at this moment, I think, in a wonderful fairy-land:"
And he bent and he whispered it low in her ear--"_I know why the
grass is green._

VIII

"I know why the daisy is white, my dear, I know why the seas are blue;
I know that the world is a dream, my dear, and I know that the dream
is true;
I know why the rose and the toad-stool grow, as a curse and a
crimson boon,
_Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over
the moon._

IX

"If I gaze at a rose, do you know, it grows till it overshadows
the earth,